Interning In A Recession: It's Changing

Students still need internships on the road to careers, but what is happening to them?

The recession is creating a crisis for traditional internships at large banks and media companies as they shed jobs and downsize to survive. Big law firms have recently had layoffs too. It might sound like that would mean a greater demand for unpaid or barely paid help, but it more often means fewer managers to oversee interns and use their talents.

The interning world will not necessarily become smaller, says Jordan Goldman, chief executive officer of the college networking Web site Unigo.com, but it will become more diversified. As many young people as ever are hoping for careers in media, but there are fewer summer positions in the biggest companies. "Interns in media are willing to work unpaid, but even so they're going to have to be creative to get the internships." Goldman says.

For instance, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have always had paid internships, but not many, and there is more demand for them than ever. Students need to make personal connections with editors and media leaders, figure out who can use their services and find imaginative ways to get a foot in the door.

Recent surveys of campus career staffs by the job Web site Vault.com have found that undergraduates are demonstrating "more interest and flexibility" in their searches for internships than ever before. Vault.com's CEO, Erik Sorenson, says, "The smartest in this highly competitive marketplace will reset their expectations to match the job environment, be decisive with potential employers and then quickly demonstrate their value in their new companies."

There will continue to be paid internships in industries like law and finance, where they've traditionally been a direct springboard to a job, but these will be fewer too. Last year 70% of the graduating students at New York Law School went into jobs with private law firms, and of those 33% went to firms with 100 or more employees. Those percentages will likely be less this year. "Law firms are cutting down on hiring, shortening the number of weeks their interns or law clerks work or eliminating programs altogether," says Carole Montgomery, director of the career development office at George Washington University Law School, in Washington, D.C.

So where will the future lawyers go? To work for judges, government, nonprofits and the like. They will still depend on internships between their school terms to gain day-to-day legal experience, read and write briefs and learn to make real legal decisions. That experience is imperative, says Jessica Tillipman, who graduated from GWU Law School in 2003. She interned for a judge, for the Washington, D.C., district attorney and for the Department of Justice, and she expects more and more students to do likewise, or to sign on with government agencies and nonprofit public-interest organizations. Tillipman heads up the program at GWU that places law students in such non-law-firm jobs, and she says 60% more students are participating this year than last.

Something similar is happening in the finance industry as Wall Street banks lose size, strength and luster. The undergraduate career services department at Harvard, which placed about 200 undergraduate students in paid finance internships last year, sought to address the decline in big bank jobs this year partly by organizing a recruiting event for boutique finance firms last fall. The big banks that remain on Wall Street, struggling to return to profitability, are losing popularity among college intern candidates.

Vault.com ranks what it considers the best internships in the country, and this year it finds that the top two in finance aren't at banks at all, but at consulting firms, Bain & Company and the
Blackstone Group
.

Harvard's career office has been pushing for more diverse career choices for some time, to get students more engaged in global public health, media and the arts. "When it was frothy in the finance markets, that sucked up a lot of students in who perhaps were not passionate about the work," says Robin Malf, the director of career services at Harvard.

We appear to be entering a time when students think earlier and more broadly about their career paths. That just might be a good thing.